Black Ivy Rage and Reform: Activism on the 1980s Harvard Campus

Alongside feelings of alienation within the ranks of the so-called "Affirmative Action babies" of the Reagan era—which witnessed systematic civil rights rollbacks—a marked degree of resilience emerged as well. Harvard black undergraduate and graduate student activists are at the center of this examination of race and educational reform during the 1980s. This paper demonstrates how black students drew on the cultural ideologies of the historical moment, which were both confrontational and possessed intellectual gravitas, and included black nationalism, hip-hop’s counter to the rise of conservatism, and the anti-apartheid movement’s postcolonial critique. Although the Harvard administration held firm to its racial policy of integration during the 1980s, a vocal group of black students and academics fought for racial reform against the center-right leanings of the university.

Harvard black student activists used radicalized rhetoric and confrontational tactics in the 1980s on several fronts. They wanted to institute the late 1960s reforms of increasing black faculty, administration and student population numbers. Black students also pushed for full funding for the Afro American Studies department. Although the issue of full divestment would remain unresolved at Harvard by the end of the decade, students remained vigilant in pressuring the administration. The university archives of Harvard provided the student ephemera essential to constructing this narrative: letters, papers, journals, and poems. In addition, oral histories provide key insights into the climactic moments of the student struggle that are not contained in student and local newspaper accounts. This paper makes a claim about the duality embodied in the larger freedom struggle: black college activists wrestled with how to utilized ascendant racial ideologies and translate them into acceptable policies. They were radicals who nevertheless wanted to achieve the democratic and mainstream goal of institutional incorporation.